Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Hamneggs, Hawaiian style

The same day we arrived in Hawaii, Chinese New Year was scheduled to begin, with fireworks, drumming and lion dancing in Chinatown on Hotel Street in Honolulu, so we drove back over the Pali to gather some good luck for 2011.

Hotel Street is notorious for strip clubs, houses of ill repute and bars, as well as being the center of Honolulu's Chinatown. When I was a young woman, I was waiting on the curb on Hotel Street for my date to park the car when I was approached by a young sailor from Pearl Harbor hoping to purchase my company for an evening. He was really pretty nice, very young and sweet, so I turned him down gently and thanked him for giving me a singular life experience.

I wish you could have been with us to explore the shops, enjoy the double arching rainbow, listen to the indefatigable drummers, risk deafness from the smoky, exciting fireworks, watch with amazement the antics of the various lion dancers, feed a little reward money into the lions' mouths for good luck this year, and sample the foods during our stroll around the area. It was colorful, noisy fun of a kind I associate strongly with Hawaii.

We sampled several treats along the way - butter mochi (a little too sweet for my taste) and this, pork hash, a little ball of protein goodness. The "pork hash" is like eggs and ham, but Chinese style. The filling is more like ham hash, a little salty and greasy, but in a good way, then wrapped in a paper-thin layer of scrambled egg. They cost less than a dollar and one is plenty to fill me up for more exploration along Hotel Street, enjoying today and memories of my past.

Cookiecrumb, if I had thought of it in that way, I guess I'd have been offended. All I saw was a lonely young boy. The pork hash wasn't pretty - I hesitated before taking a bite - but it was surprisingly tasty.